


Scorched Earth

by rabbitprint



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-20
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set around episode 13. How Scar manages to get through arriving at Central with no supplies and a dead body on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Scar tastes himself when he walks. It's unavoidable. Tarred cobblestones on his boots, mud from the road. Sawdust mixes in the rain, damp and moldering; the factories are sulky children huddled together in rows as he passes them by, glowering underneath the grey afternoons of Central. Their windows narrow in suspicion. He's only been here three days and the city is already trying to swallow him alive.

Scar tastes like moist garbage cans and stoplights. He's walked the streets, and now he smells like them. Crippled dogs could find him from miles away. Military ones -- real ones. Both unforgivable.

This won't do. For one thing, he killed a man yesterday. An _alchemist _\-- and by now the law is shuffling into motion, officers springing to clockwork life behind the scenes. The city is quiet, draped with the sodden blanket of humidity, but Scar knows that within the dull military buildings, there are soldiers waiting to take their revenge.

He can't hide forever in alleyways and sewers. Not while the first wave of investigations pass. Central will be alert for trouble; Scar is a stranger, dark of skin, red eyes cloaked behind his shades. He radiates suspicion as readily as his skin is flavored with street trash.

Cleanliness is, technically, a luxury. Years in the watersparse deserts of Ishbal have taught Scar the use of oils and scouring sands, but ever since setting foot in Central, Scar has been _coated_ with moisture. Droplets have crawled down his back and nestled between his shoulderblades like miniature assassins. For a man like Scar, it is intolerable. He no longer relies on sound or sight to provide his greatest warnings: it's all about _pressure_ now, the barometer of temperatures and density helping to warn when the next explosion will hit.

With the heat of Central's summer, the overcast skies and heavy rain, the city feels like a huge bomb waiting for its detonation trigger.

Scar's instincts have hated it with every step. Here the wind is thick, heavy; humidity clings to every square centimeter, laden with dew and the clatterings of the city's inhabitants. The breeze can barely struggle through the openings presented by Central's narrow streets. Exhaust puffs out of the cars that rattle about daily business, mixing with the smog from the industrial quarters and the greater engine of the military machine. To Scar's mind, the water here does not know what to do with itself. It bumbles against the tightly-clumped houses instead, picking up the taint of the local sinners, and infecting nearby pedestrians.

In this lush, ripe luxury of water, Scar cannot afford to indulge himself. The air is filthy. The _city_ is _dirty_, and still his problem of escape is not solved: he cannot find a place to conceal himself properly without the aid of civilization, but is not foolish enough to dare the main facilities. Here in Central they have plumbing almost everywhere, funneled from wells that people do not have to dig themselves, but Scar knows better than to be tempted by the sweet lure of this softer form of life.

"No plant will grow on this barren land," he reminds himself, plodding through the intersections while cars swish by him only inches away. He keeps his eyes down, face down, everything about his overlarge demeanor huddled inwards in an attempt to maintain a semblance of harmlessness. "No good can come from soil diseased."

That night is spent on a bypath behind a series of restaurants. Scar beds down among cardboard boxes sodden with the juices of rotting kitchens; disgusted by his own actions, he scrounges through the night's discards anyway until he finds a sauce-coated roll of bread, and peels away the outer crust until he can gnaw at the softer fluff within. The meal does little to quiet the grumbles of his stomach. Forcing it down, Scar pushes two garbage bins together to form a makeshift barricade, and bends his limbs until he can fit behind it safely.

He sleeps, and dreams of rifles.

The morning finds his joints stiff, screaming when he attempts to uncramp them. Dawn snuck past without rousing him. There are cars on the road already, distant wheels humming as their motors click away, pedestrians mumbling on the way to their workplaces. Moving brings a renewed hunger with it as Scar's muscles demand fodder; casting an eye at the cold offerings of the trash heaps, the man turns away resolutely and picks a direction to walk.

* * *

By the time the sun has painted fuzzy shadows across the afternoon, Scar has left the better restaurants behind and wandered into rows of grey, soot-streaked houses. They're jammed so tightly together that the tiny address numbers are stacked up like coffins, hammered into place with pennynails and tape. The wood rooftops are splintered. Bricks tumble out from the side of one home, where the wall has started to collapse, bursting open like maggots out of a belly wound.

Scar passes exactly one other person as he walks: a haggard woman, who refuses to lift her eyes from the road and instead scowls down at her own feet as she hurries by.

This is not a good sign.

There is a smell that Scar can't identify, a chemical breeze, and after a long moment he figures it's blowing in from the factories further down. Some part of his mind recognizes this district as one neglected by the city's authority, pushed into the corner and ignored by the law. _The dark roads_, as his brother used to warn him back home, pointing out narrow alleyways and houses whose windows were always covered over with black sheets. Where, it was whispered, there were certain types of merchants who played dangerously with sin. Where everything had a price -- but it could always be delivered, usually in the middle of the night.

Scar feels his lip curl as he walks, as if his body is ten again and defenseless against the threats of thieves and slavers. Muscles coil. Scar is tall now, huge and taut with his own power, but some fears, he has never been able to escape.

But this district is safer for him than any others, so long as the military is on the hunt. Scar hasn't seen a car in over an hour. The parking signs are bent and graffitied; one scrawny house has all its windows broken in and boarded over with plywood. A few streets over, a man's voice lifts in drunken anger, purling its syllables out clumsily before releasing a belch of noisy vomit as punctuation.

Scar's stomach twists in mixed hunger and nausea. He needs to be fed -- more than that, he needs to get _clean_, to scrub this city off his body and be _done_ with his god-given task. The obsession is heavy in his arm. It simmers in his brain.

At the next intersection, he finds what he's looking for.

The sign is blurred from being pressed against the windowpane for so long, ink softened until the letters stream into each other. _One meal_, it announces. _Linens provided_. Nothing more than that, but Scar knows this is as good as it's going to get.

He knocks. The house smells like mustard.

It takes a few minutes for the door to open, but Scar is patient. Expecting some gruff half-shaven landlord, he's surprised to see only a drab hallway, and then he brings his eyes down to discover a woman there. She barely comes up to his chest. There's a thick ring on one of her fingers; a marriage band, Scar assumes, observing the silver that's so tarnished it's nearly black in some places.

The woman's eyes are cabbage-grey, set in a face lined with tiny dishwater wrinkles. She is not ancient -- not even qualified for middle-years -- but the weariness in her motions is unmistakable. Scar has seen the symptoms often in Ishbal, the disease that turns young into grey. He suffers from it as well, and is reminded every time he touches his own scalp to find hairs that have gone milk-white before their time.

War has its price.

"Payment in full up front." She's brisk. Her hands dry themselves in her apron, fast swipes of her fingers. "No smoking, no gambling, and absolutely _no_ doxies. Dinner's at six each night. Any extra days, you tell me _before_ you plan on taking 'em."

Scar's hand fumbles in his pocket. It was a craven act to steal from the dead, but God did not provide any other form of currency save the wallets of his victims. "Is this enough for three nights?" he asks, offering the crumpled bills in hopes of high denominations.

One look and the woman's frowning. She takes her time to answer; the hardened lower lip of a practiced barterer. "Barely enough for one." Another twist of her apron, and she's working the cloth through the webbing of her fingers, cleaning off any lingering traces of soap-suds. "Could throw in a little extra egg for your supper though. You look like you could use it."

"I need three nights." Scar, firm. He could kill this stranger and live in her home -- kill the other renters too -- but she is not one of the alchemists marked for destruction, and Scar is queasily certain that she may be a total innocent. Destroying her would be cowardly. Even he has limits.

A roll of her eyes. "Can you fix the plumbing?" When Scar shakes his head, laboriously slow, the woman hisses a sigh of annoyance. "What about the washup, can you at least manage that? Y'look like you've got some meat on your bones. If you can manage the repairs and chores, I might be willing to trade you for a day."

Trade. Scar isn't sure what to say to that. He is more of an animal than he'd like to admit; years of vendetta have done that to him, isolation from his own people turning him into an alien twice-over, exile from normal behaviors. He's not sure what constitutes _fair trade_ in a city of equivalent sinners, but the taste of garbage-can slime is in his mouth, and he knows he can't afford to be picky.

When the woman squints and leans forward, Scar finds himself recoiling away from the whiff of flour and lye soap on her skin.

"The name's Mabel. Do you have one?"

Scar shies again to the side, wondering if, this close, the woman can see past his shades and into the color of his eyes.

If so, she makes no indication. Shaking out her apron with a sigh, Mabel studies him for a minute, and then shrugs. "All right then, Mister Nothing, I'll put you upstairs with all the others."

* * *

Dinner is a short affair, one that Scar skips. Not willingly. His stomach is murderous, but Scar knows it's more important to scout out his new location, and food will make him sleepy. If the military finds him in the night, he'd rather be able to move fast and not be tracked. That means cleanliness comes first.

When he asks about water, he's pointed to the bathroom down the hall from his room. Mildew paints black clouds across the tiles inside, a growing fungal invasion that threatens to overwhelm the tub and devour the house. The ceiling sags. Scar's pants are filthy enough that he has to peel them off his body, and there's a blotchy pattern left behind on his skin like a leper's mark.

Scar's aware of what showers are for, but he never liked the waste. Rather than spoil all that liquid in an irreverent flood, Scar only fills up the washbasin and scrubs himself clean with a handtowel, trying his best not to let any puddle around his feet. The houses in Ishbal had stone floors; here, there are only cracking tiles, the grouting frozen in twists where it's trying to peel itself out and escape.

His clothing is harder to manage. It takes numerous rinses to get the dirt out, mud and blood and trash, and Scar only watches stoically as each fresh basin of water becomes polluted.

Eventually, the liquid soaks clean, and Scar wrings the drops out of the fabric.

He doesn't trust the other renters, so he waits until everyone is downstairs eating before wrapping a towel around his waist and padding back to his room. There's no lock on his door, but he can wedge the dresser in front of it with a minimum of effort. When Scar pulls the drawers out so he can hang his clothes on them to dry, he discovers artifacts of previous guests: a candy wrapper, a toothpick. Half a shoelace, along with a wrinkled and crumbling thing that he realizes is an Amestris contraceptive.

It looks used. Scar ignores it.

Through the flimsy walls, he can hear the plodding steps as the lodgers climb the stairs and take to their rooms for the night. Some of them joke to each other. Others are sullen. Someone sneezes.

In the next room over, one man is crooning a stream of lusty pleas, grunting _more_ and _yes_ and _like that, baby_ \-- but nothing answers him and no bedsprings creak, and Scar realizes that he's alone.

* * *

That night, Scar dreams of leaving Ishbal. In it, he's been drinking of himself for days. His tongue runs over his hands to consume the moisture from his pores, tasting salt from his left, and death from the other.

Damp palms are wasteful. Water expended, when he should be conserving every drop. Hot sun and exhaustion conspire to the point where Scar's throat is closing tight, trying to dry-heave protests of its own needs, but his body screams for relief.

He can't stop walking. The gnawing hole in his stomach was a dim reminder that he should eat something, but he can't slow down, he _can't_ afford to become distracted. If he stops in the desert, he'll die -- that's a rule that his brother taught him too, how easy it is to lose your bearings if you let yourself stumble off the path.

When the straps of his supply packs burn with friction, sweat slicking every inch of his throbbing palms, Scar sets the bags down and touches his tongue to the welted flesh. He feeds off himself. Grinding his swollen hands between his teeth helps the pain go numb, just for a little bit, and that's enough for him to get his stamina back.

The dream doesn't bother with the entire trip, but when Scar finds himself blinking awake in his cheap hotel room, he rolls over and his side and remembers the rest. His fingers had eventually become too dehydrated even for sweat. Scar had fumbled in the road-dust until he'd managed to collect several pebbles; these, he put in his mouth one by one, sucking on them to fool his body into producing saliva. That had been the trick that kept him from going mad from thirst, all the long way down to Central.

His brother had taught him that one too, but never how to keep from trying to chew.


	2. Chapter 2

When Scar wakes up, he's flat on his back. Sprawled. His body has taken advantage of the mattress to stretch its limbs out, enjoying freedom after so many nights spent cramped into sewer tunnels and garbage bins. At first he thinks he's dead -- how could he not be, with a smoke-stain ceiling above him, four walls, no cars. He's somewhere safe, which can only mean the afterlife.

His arms are stiff when he bends them up to rub at his eyes. There's a pinprick of fear upon realizing his sleepy vulnerability, the exposed stomach that begs for a knife, but Scar controls himself. He sits up slow. The spark-quick tickle of danger vanishes, and Scar's left feeling empty without it, bereft of adrenaline. This hostel is not hell. He is not deceased. Ishbala's judgement has not come.

Too bad.

He didn't have much time last night to gather impressions of the building he's taken shelter in, but daylight does nothing to grant it charm. The curtains in his bedroom used to be white lace once, but now they are yellowed beyond any hope of recovery. Down the hall, pipes rattle. One man plods past the door, smacking his gums while his feet creak the floorboards in a steady, tormented tenor.

It doesn't take long before the rest of Scar's body rouses. It's hungry; that's nothing new, which is a fact that Scar accepts sour-mouthed, the grumbling and faint nausea of an organic system in disarray. He can't afford to flee before breakfast, not when he skipped dinner the night before. Whether he likes it or not, he needs to eat. Now.

Halfway down the stairs to the living room, he freezes.

The instinct saves him. Mabel is standing at the window with her hand on the drapes, keeping them pulled open so she can get a good view of the military cars driving by outside. Two army vehicles cruise into sight together, the drivers turning their heads as they scan the street. Their expressions are pinched underneath identical military caps. Scar's heart makes unsteady rolls inside his chest as he presses against the wall, and only when he sees Mabel's hand drop the curtain does he dare to move.

She notices him quickly once he's left the protection of the stairway, the last few steps groaning underneath his weight. "The army's in one of their fuss-ups again." Unruffled, the woman turns towards the kitchen, hands burying themselves in a dishrag as she walks. The air smells like candied socks. "Sleep fine, Mister Nothing? You'll need to have your things out by this afternoon. I can strip the linens myself, don't worry about them."

Scar finds his eyes fixed on the grime-tainted curtains. His attention is so firmly engrossed that he is forced to turn his body towards the woman and order his face to catch up. Belated, he shakes his head. "No." Then, "I need to stay longer."

"Do you," she asks, inflectionless. Her eyes are watching Scar; they flick once to the window when a stray van rumbles by. Then back to him. "You going to have the pay for it?"

Another shake of his head. Scar lets go of the railing gingerly, and, just as quickly, takes hold of it again, feeling the withered wood scrape his palm. His grip is awkward. The irony of this situation sticks like soap against his gums, a chemical warning of bitterness. He's getting by on the mercy of his enemies.

Ishbala must be testing him.

Mabel does not fight. The rag slides over her fingers before getting turned into a neat square, the woman not even having to look down for this automatic task. "I'll be out today for errands," she announces, chin up as if to overlook her own generosity. "I need to pick up some things. If you can finish all the chores for this place by the time I get back, I'll give you another evening." Another flip of cloth, and Mabel has finished with the dishrag and is disappearing into the kitchen, which has begun to ooze a thin trail of hog-flavored steam. "You didn't come down for dinner last night," she calls back, "so I saved you a plate. Second shelf in the refrigerator. Breakfast is in thirty minutes, so better eat it fast before someone else does."

The kitchen is cramped. Stacks of dirty dishes are lined up by the sink. It is polite for Scar to perform service first and receive sustenance after, so he digs his meal out of the fridge and sets it on the counter where he can keep an eye on it. The plate contains a slice of meat surrounded by yellow-green vegetables, and a thin layer of fat has congealed over it all, leaving a milky veil behind. He'll have to eat it cold.

After he's finished with the washing, that is. Pushing his meal reluctantly to the side, Scar studies the sink. He looks automatically for the basin of powder-sand before he remembers that these people do not scour their bowls clean; instead, there's a dingy sponge that's crumbling into grey disease. It leaks a cold slime over his fingers. The tap creaks when it's twisted on, guttering an imperfect flow of water; spitting bubbles first, and then running a dangerously brown tinge before straightening out to clear. Scar stares warily at the liquid even after the sink has begun to look innocent again, reaching his fingers out carefully, half-expecting the drops to burn.

Once he gets used to the feel of the water, he lets the river pour over his fingers. Soap lathers into bubbles on his pitted, dark skin. Mabel hums to herself as she cracks another egg into the frying pan, ignoring Scar's presence as she digs through the kitchen for forks and cups.

She doesn't talk to him. For the first ten minutes, Scar keeps trying to watch her, keeps trying to have the woman in clear view at all times, but Mabel doesn't act suspicious. The drawers rattle when she yanks them open, but her hands never produce knives, cunning blades forged for carving roasts.

Eventually Scar gives up and works on the saucers.

Breakfast is served while he is working. Mabel doles the rubbery eggs onto a platter and hefts it into the dining room, following it up with a pitcher of watery orange juice. She does not force Scar to stop work and eat with the other diners, which Scar is grateful for. It keeps him out of sight as much as possible. There are not many darker-skinned folk in Amestris, and even fewer with white hair and red eyes to match -- and that's ignoring the fat X streaked across his face, the angry double-slash of malice.

She's gone before the end of breakfast. Many of the renters disperse on their own schedule, leaving wedges of half-eaten toast behind. A few of them enter the kitchen; Scar is cautious of them too, even when they only drop off their dishes and depart.

After the washing is done, Scar picks his own meal off the countertop, and cleans his plate exactingly. His stomach is greedy. Once he has a bite of real food, it's hard to stop, until Scar discovers that he's running his thumb over the dish to try and sop up every shred of beef sauce, smearing cold fat into the peas.

The temptation to pick up the plate and lick it like an animal is strong. Evoking the destructive powers of his arm drains the energy out of him; deconstruction gives him a ferocious appetite, one he's been trying to ignore. Eating reminds Scar that he's alive again, which is a blessing and a curse. It shouldn't feel _good_ to live: he has a mission that could kill him any day now, and Scar must remain intent upon his path. Self-preservation gets in the way. Relishing food -- hungering for it, craving it -- is a sign of impulses he must train himself to ignore.

The more he lets himself live, the less willing he will be to die.

Once he's finished with his own dishes, Scar dries off his hands and wanders through the hostel. The rooms upstairs are for sleepers; many have left their doors closed, but here and there a door is cracked open to reveal a resident going about their business. Occasionally, a renter exits to the hall. They give Scar only the briefest of glances before looking past his shoulder in the politeness of mass-bedders.

Surprisingly, there are no whispers marking his presence. These individuals are uninterested in his appearance, and turn their faces away so that he cannot glimpse their identities clearly either. The unspoken anonymity is comforting. No one cares what he is doing here, so long as he does not care about them.

Mabel left him a list on the kitchen table. Scar gives it a wide berth at first, skirting the deceptively innocent scrap of paper before he sighs and forces himself to pick it up.

She wants him to wash the linens stacked in the lower bathroom. When he goes there, flicking on the weary yellow lights, he's greeted by a thick bar of amber lye soap and the smell of old sweat coming off the sheets. There's a smaller plastic washtub sitting in the corner, but the paper instructs him to plug the bathtub and fill it to boiling.

Despite his expectations, Scar isn't arrested that night. Mabel comes home just in time to prepare dinner, and she returns alone, no military police in tow. There's a canvas envelope in her hand which she clutches tight to her chest, but the only official stamp it bears is from a library. She asks briefly if he managed to get everything done, and in answer, Scar points out the window to the backyard where rows of grey sheets are hanging out to dry.

* * *

Mabel is busier and busier as the week goes on. In exchange for the laundry, she lets him stay an additional eight hours. Hauling the trash down three streets to the nearest dumpster earns him another night to rest. Meals are interspersed during these hours, platters with greasy chunks of ham and pale yellow eggs. Black vans still cruise the streets, but Scar sees them less each day, the army all too willing to ignore this sector of disrepair. _The dark roads_, as Scar's brother once cautioned. The dark roads that Scar is lost on now.

One night, Scar opens his eyes from nightmares of sand dunes melting into rivers of glass. He stares into the mottled darkness of his room without breathing. There was a sound in his dream that kept playing again and again, and he holds himself perfectly still until he hears it once more, and can identify it.

What woke him wasn't the noise itself, but the fact that it's different from anything else in the hostel's nighttime static: it sounds like a woman crying.

Women's tears have always had the ability to bother him. They remind him uncomfortably of home, of his brother or his brother's lover. As Scar lies there in bed, acutely aware of the rough sheets and mildew stains on the ceiling, he realizes he can't possibly go back to sleep now.

When he eases his way downstairs, unable to keep the floorboards from entirely creaking underneath his weight, Scar discovers Mabel sitting at the flimsy living-room table. Papers are spread out in front of her. The texts are fanned in a radius of lines, ugly forms with a hundred empty boxes to fill with cramped penstrokes. Mabel's cheeks are tight, flattened in a grimace as she stares at the verdict spelled out through the language of bureaucracy, the pages which cross-reference other documents and require triple-checking twice.

In her desperation, the woman is making little sounds. They're far beyond the realm of Scar's familiarity; he can't figure out what to do about it. She's whimpering as if there's something wrong inside her -- a broken rib or crushed larynx, internal bleeding. Collapsed lung. A death that will come slowly, but which can't be fixed, so it will linger on painfully until the flesh simply gives up.

Scar's feet scuff the carpet. At the noise, Mabel jerks her head up. She's caught exposed. Scar starts to move gingerly towards her with his hands spread low in a shepard's hurt-thee-not, but she doesn't bolt for safety like a spooked ram. Instead, the woman drops her face into her hands and begins to leak tears over her palms, awkward dribbles that seep out from between her knuckles and down one wrist.

Scar retreats.

* * *

The next time he dares to leave his room after-hours, there's no noise to disturb him this time. Nothing that obvious. There's a light peeping under the crack in his door, and when he pushes it open, he notices that the source comes from downstairs. Not the living room this time -- the kitchen. Whoever has left the lamps on can't be one of the other renters, and if it is, then they're up to something. Maybe they're stealing extra meals.

He descends the stairs more carefully this time, wondering if he will catch the culprit in the act. Some part of him is amused; he is no guard dog for this foreign woman. It does not matter what happens to the hostel, so long as Scar is gone before it occurs.

But there is no mischief out tonight. Mabel glances up when he enters the kitchen, her eyes bleary and red. There are stacks of dirty dishes on the countertop, left there by sloppy eaters. When Scar glimpses them, he knows he has to catch up on work. At first he wonders why Mabel's up so late if she's not cleaning, and then he sees the papers spread out like dull burial shrouds again, this time covered with tiny ink answers.

There's a stack of photographs mixed in with the documents on the table, and when Mabel catches him looking at them, she pushes the top one out.

"Jacob," she offers. Then, the wisp of a smile struggling in her mouth, "My husband."

Scar does not pick up the photograph. Instead, he slides it closer to him with one finger, looming over the faded picture on the table. The man has a weak chin. His ears are too long and stick out from the tufts of an embarrassing haircut, a trim that makes it look as if the man has a blond rat glued to his scalp.

When Scar makes no comment, Mabel speaks again. "He's still up north -- or was, last I heard." Slouched shoulders make a shrug, a loose, painfully indifferent gesture. "The military doesn't give us many choices. He goes wherever there's an opening, and there's not much of that if you're not a soldier with 'em, or some other kind of fancy officer."

Scar's fingers spread themselves over the picture. If he closed his hand, he could destroy the image of the man's skull with the same ease as he could the living being.

The question is necessary. "He's an alchemist?"

"Yes. No," Mabel corrects herself, a flurry of emotions marching across her face before she has a chance to turn it away and focus back on the documents. "He _could_ be. He's good enough, or he will be, with just some more training. But the military won't give him any, so he's got to go do paperwork for them up north until they let him retake his tests.

She's babbling. Scar lets her, attempting to let the woman's words run past him like filthy water from a sink tap. "But they've been giving him the runaround for years. My Jacob, he says that one of his uncles got on the bad side of their generals a long time 'go, and that's why they're making it so difficult. It's all he can do just to have his clerk job -- he sends me every penny he can, but it's hard sometimes when the bills come in, particularly in winter and... and this ain't your business, stranger." Pulling a wrinkled handkerchief from her pocket, she daubs her eyes with a fierce pride. "Don't you mind me, Mister Nothing. Ain't your trouble to worry about. You got your own problems, I'd imagine."

Awkward, Scar releases the picture and moves away. He needs to fill his hands with something other than potential murder. Gravitating towards the counter, the Ishbal man seizes upon the dirty dishes and plunks them into the sink.

Mabel speaks again after a few minutes. Her voice no longer wavers, except on the longer vowels. "We've spent the last four years just trying to get the right forms together. Some of these things, they're the original records -- no copies." A pat of her hand on the table. "All those stamps and signatures... but my Jacob managed to get one of the alchemists up there to sign a registration chit for him. Took six months for the mail to get it to me." A sniff. "Guess we're just not an important enough part of the military for proper service."

The sponge feels like a cotton slug in Scar's hands. He squeezes mechanically. One of the plates starts to slip and he readjusts his grip, trying hard not to pay attention.

Mabel is still talking, unaware of the damnation of each syllable. "Now we've almost got everything together though. Just have to get the paperwork in order, and then Jacob can come home and become a _real_ alchemist after all. I know what folks say," she interrupts herself, her voice growing stronger with each word, taking courage from ancient hopes, "about them being dogs an' all. But he won't have to go into the front lines anywhere. He won't have to fight. This alchemy of his'll give us a better life. It'll help us so much. It really will."

From the sink, there's a cracking sound.

Scar's face is perfectly blank as he turns, and says simply, "I broke your plate."


	3. Chapter 3

He can't stay at the hostel any longer. Rooms that had once been plain have now taken on the pinnings of heresy, as if alchemy had constructed the foundation, brick by brick, nail by bloody nail. As if the wood had been transmuted from _bones_; the water is brown not from rust, but from decaying tissue. Sin built this house. Resting here is a heathen's trap.

It's harder to leave than he expected. Complacency snuck up on Scar during his recovery, dulling his instincts for war. It's been days since he's used the dresser to block access to his room, and even longer since he's huddled up at night with senses primed, waiting for thieves to rappel through his window. He's slept in late. He's sat with his back to open doors. He's eaten large bites of his food without concern for poisons. The squashed pillow has even begun to smell like him, a little.

It was good being able to sleep somewhere safe. But now it's time to go.

Scar doesn't have possessions to pack, and any financial debt's been cleared through manual labor. A sense of obligation keeps him in his room an extra hour while he cleans up, stripping the sheets and bunching them in a clumsy pile on one end of the dresser. There's not much more he can do without alerting Mabel to his departure, but he can at least turn the mattress over, and maybe fix the loose blinds.

Voices drift down the hallway as he works. At first he ignores them, assuming that the conversation is between two anonymous renters, but the volume increases until the words run clear. Sentences turn to shouts. Scar grits his jaw, and tries to focus on his work, hefting the broken-spring mattress in his arms as he pulls it across the bedframe.

"Mister Palov!" It's Mabel. She's hoarse. "Three days, and not a penny given for any of them! You pay up or get out! So help me..."

A man's laugh cuts her off there, ripe with mockery and scorn. "You can't do a thing against me, you cheap hag. You're lucky you're getting money at all, since you're too ugly to spread your legs for it. Maybe if I had better _service,_ I might be willing to slip you a coin, but -- "

There's a sharp crack of flesh. When Scar pushes open the door and leans out, he sees Mabel near the stairs, frozen with her palm uplifted. A figure blocks the path between him and her; it's one of the other renters, a tall man who always stole extra during breakfasts and filched other people's toast. His chin is turned to the side. It looks like he's clutching his face.

Familiar with the many dialects of violence, Scar knows that a matron's slap does nothing to deter petty cruelty. If anything, it usually makes it worse.

"Stupid _whore_!" Palov sneers, straightening up and taking a step towards Mabel. "If you think that's a beating, maybe I should show you one better!"

It's not his problem, Scar tells himself. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply. _There is no reason to aid the wife of a future sinner._

He's suddenly behind Palov anyway, muscles moving in confident, automatic twists as his body explodes into action. Palov's arm bends itself up, trapped like a pale snake in Scar's fingers; the man's other wrist is pinned at his side, spasming in pain. Scar applies a small amount of pressure, experimentally, and _feels_ more than hears the fluid pop of dislocation.

Palov's screams alert even the normally reclusive boarders. They pop their heads out of their rooms, one by one like desert rodents, fleeing just as quickly.

"Bastard!" Palov's curses turn quickly from slurs into swearing. Some of the slang, Scar doesn't recognize, but he senses himself being insulted along with Mabel. The words roll off his hearing. He lets them fade, serene in his own brutality and self-denial.

Just as his captive starts to wind down from lack of breath, Scar gives the man a hard shove forward.

"Get out." The words are rough. Scar's voice is unfamiliar twice over, both from disuse and from the oddity of the situation. The Ishbal refugee should not be defending a stranger. He should not be doing this. "Never come back."

When Palov stumbles, Scar kicks him down the stairs.

He doesn't bother packing up the man's things for him neatly, only prying open the room's window and tossing them out to the street below. One suitcase comes open during the fall; it tumbles end over end during its stunted descent. As Scar flings a grimy jacket, watching the canvas balloon through the air, he can hear Palov's complaints from the far side of the house.

"You'll pay for this!" The tinny threat bounces up and down the road. Echoes skitter away, lost in the broken glass of the sidewalks, and Palov spouts another round of angry epithets. "You broke my arm, you white-haired freak! You broke my godda --"

Scar shuts the window.

Mabel is in the kitchen when Scar finds her. Water heats in a jagged plume on the stove; Mabel's gestures are slow, and her fingers tremble when she goes through the cupboards looking for a saucer. Her dignity is running low, pride cowed beneath the weight of fear. The woman's cheeks are as pale as if she'd been shot in the stomach and left to bleed.

"Thank you," she says, turning her head when Scar enters, and then taking down a second cup. The kettle hisses. Mabel digs out one of the dented strainers from a cabinet and fills it with three pinches of dark leaves, trickling hot liquid slowly through to steep. The results look more like sewage water, but Scar drinks anyway when she offers. "Will he... is he coming back?"

Scar's tongue pushes against his teeth, tasting the cheap grass of the leaves, the rancid metal of the teapot. When Mabel looks up expectantly, cued by the silence, he shakes his head. "Shouldn't," is the answer, slow and deliberating. "Wouldn't be a good idea."

That night should have marked his departure. But Scar sits up late in the kitchen with Mabel as she pens cramped letters on registration forms, and the tea-water is boiled again and again. He wraps his knuckles with tape, studying each tiny blemish from countless fights. His brother's hand started off smooth, but even it's picked up nicks over the years. War is hard.

It's surreal what he's done today, what he's helped protect. It makes Scar want to laugh at himself in disbelief. All his Ishbal sensibilities mock this misplaced compassion. These people are his enemies. He can't afford to think of them as human.

The walls of the hostel chitter with sin, and Scar does his best to ignore them.

* * *

Early the next morning, a brisk knocking rattles the front door.

It's the military. They've sent two soldiers. One of them is yawning, wide gapes of his lips that he does his best to cover behind a gloved hand. The other wears a crass glare of displeasure. They both look tired, and irritable, and -- above all -- dangerous to one Ishbal refugee.

Mabel is the one who answers them, dishtowel in one hand while refusing to invite them inside. They present their questions from the front stoop. Scar can't hear them clearly, but Mabel's words trickle back to where he hides against the stairwell.

"There're a dozen scuffles you never pay attention to," the woman grouses. "Never took an interest in my beds before, not even with that madman seven months ago and all those little girls missing. Where were you then? Hm? When they caught him, it was just two streets over, but we never saw one wink of _you_."

Scar scoots closer to the edge. His nerves are sharp twists that curl his stomach with nausea. There are three ways he can escape from the second floor without being seen from the main road, but there's always the chance that other soldiers have circled around to wait.

"Mr. Palov's complaint was quite clear, m'am." The last word mutates into a mumble of sound, and the officer smacks his lips while he tries to wake up. "He said he was assaulted by one of your boarders, a violent foreigner with white hair and dark skin. We _have_ had reports of a troublemaker in the city recently, m'am. Figured it'd be best if we came by to check it out."

The second officer's drawl is too bored to be anything but pretense as he cuts in, cold and neat. "It could be that there's an undesireable element that's hiding out here -- without your knowledge of course, m'am. It'd be to your... _advantage_ if you cooperated by sharing information about anyone suspicious."

"The only thing suspicious is that bastard who got tipped out last night," Mabel snaps vengefully. "None of others came in with a bloody axe in their hand or nothing, so you can look elsewhere for folk to fill your jail-cellars."

Laying down flat against the floorboards, Scar pushes himself forward like an inchworm. The lip of the stairwell comes into view; he can see the officers silhouetted in the frame of the doorway. Both of them shift their weight, and then glance at one another. Neither have watch-chains hanging from their hip.

"Then your statement stands, m'am?"

Mabel snorts. "I had a renter here who refused to leave and refused to pay. He was made to go by one of the others. Ain't nothing new _or_ strange about that. Never will be either, not unless you soldiers plan to start helping us folks out."

The door closes. Mabel parts the aging lace of the curtains with a finger and watches the car drive away.

She turns back towards the stairs and takes them two at a time. Scar scrambles to his feet, barely fast enough to stand before she's bearing down on him, hands clenched in tight fists by her side. She doesn't bother to acknowledge his eavesdropping before she launches into a demand.

"I need to know something now, Mister." Mabel's lips are thin and hard. "Are you going to cause any trouble for me?"

Scar has faced down fiery demons before. He's fought alchemists. He's crossed deserts coated in blood and woken with the sounds of gunfire all around him, hot bullets ripping through canvas and flesh alike.

None of these experiences have included a white-knuckled woman in a poor house.

"No."

"Swear it." A hint of panic sends tremors through the woman's voice. Mabel cannot throw Scar out by force, any more than she could have ejected Palov; the two officers have already departed, and right now in this hall they are alone. He could do anything to her."If you've any reason to draw the military down on you, I want you _gone_. I can't have this house blacked by the government. They don't forgive."

Truth is an orphan child in the back room. It whimpers, and Scar tries to pretend it doesn't exist. "I am not the cause of their problems," he vows to her, feeling the sourness of dishonesty in his mouth. The act is close enough to heresy, and for a minute, he appeals to Ishbala's better nature, Ishbala's higher understanding. _The **military** is the source of this conflict_, he states carefully in his mind, just in case God is listening. _I didn't cause it. I didn't start it. That was not a lie._

Mabel's not convinced. It shows, but they're both at an impasse. "If you've done me wrong," she voices through a scowl, "I don't care how big you think you are, so help me, I _will_ turn you over my knee like a little boy and tan your hide."

The mental image is almost humorous. Almost. But Scar realizes the grave seriousness in the woman's desperation, the way her spine hunches and her breathing is fast. "I promise," he tells her softly, meaning every word, "I will not endanger your life."

They stare at each other as the hostel wakes up slowly around them, toilet flushing and renters shuffling past in hopes of breakfast.

"No," Mabel says at last, relaxing against the wall. "I don't think you would."

* * *

Because of the renewed suspicions of the military, Scar has to stay another night. That's what he figures is safe. That's what he tells himself, because his actions were rash and he can't afford to move while their eyes are upon him.

His bed welcomes him back without needing an apology. Mabel gets hold of a fresh tomato from the surplus produce markets somehow, and dices it up into morning breakfast. He gets extra.

The renters are skittish all that week, but none of them can afford to quit in search of cheaper rates in a mythical neighborhood with less violence. Palov never shows. There's garbage strewn across the front steps one morning, and Scar frowns as he cleans it up, but there's no further signs of harassment and eventually another man takes up the empty room.

He's doing the dishes one afternoon while Mabel folds sheets in the kitchen, tunelessly humming to herself. She's never asked him about his past; the pair of them have worked for hours in the same room together without speaking a word. If it wasn't so strange, it would be calming.

Scar's finishing up a fresh stack of cups when Mabel clears her throat.

"You won't have to worry 'bout me too much longer, Mister Nothing." As he turns towards her, one brow quizzical at the interruption, she grins widely. "The paperwork's almost done. My Jacob'll be able to fix this whole place up once he's an official alchemist."

Surprised, Scar grunts.

Cloth turns itself into straight lines in the woman's hands. Focused on squaring off the sheets, Mabel continues happily, unaware of the predator's silence across the room. "We won't have to rent out any more beds to strangers. Might fix up the front yard, get some grass instead of just dirt. Maybe even change neighborhoods. Go somewhere safe. Somewhere better."

She turns away to gather up the stack of linens into her arms.

Scar notices he has forgotten how to breathe.

"He'll be part of the military soon. You'll see. And none of these problems will ever have to happen again."

* * *

That night, Scar leaves his room. The beacon-light of the kitchen is on; all week, Mabel has been staying up through the small hours pre-dawn, cheap tea on the stove and documents under pen. Scar had dismissed her work unconsciously, expecting the mountain of paperwork to never be completed, just as he had expected to leave days ago.

Now it seems that time has run out.

He's quiet descending the stairs. The floorboards are familiar with the man's weight; they accept his passage without a fuss, too docile to even groan. No one else in the hostel is awake. Scar passes closed doorways and dark rooms, navigating as much by touch and smell as he does by dimmed sight; he is an animal hunting, unsure of what he'll find.

When he rounds the corner into the kitchen, Scar comes to a halt.

She was telling the truth. Every time he had visited Mabel before, there were unfinished forms scattered like stray children across the table. Now there are only several thick folders stacked together in a single tower, studded with paperclips, the corners of photographs peeking out between the pages.

Mabel's head is down, pillowed in her arms as she sleeps.

Scar circles her warily, sidling closer to the table until the edge of it nudges against his thigh and Mabel's chair is by his elbow. The pile of folders is several inches high. He can't imagine how long it must have taken to collect all the material; even Mabel's claims of months and years in preparation don't register as truth until he's finally staring at the end result.

He lowers his hand to the papers, and feels the density of another man's life beneath his fingers.

The kitchen air is thick with the smell of cheap tea, punctuated by the lemon of dish soap. One of the water valves had broken earlier last week. Having no other solution and no funds to call a repairman, Mabel had resorted to sticking a bucket underneath the sink to catch the leak and emptying it in the bathtub whenever it was full. She'd laughed every time she did, struggling with the weight until Scar started to ferry it for her.

Money will fix the broken house. Money, or a different location, a different life. Payments from the renters barely keep the hostel in service, and any funds are funneled right back into bills. Scar's seen Mabel haggle for every coin in rent. Looking at her asleep, he can detect the small wrinkles in her face; she is not unlike the women of his hometown, their skin pinched with worry, hopeful and hopeless all at once.

Money can break the cycle of poverty.

But if Mabel's husband is accepted by the military, he will return home as a creature that Scar has vowed to kill. There can be no deviations, no exceptions. No mercy for scorched earth.

The deconstruction takes remarkably little fuss. Scar checks Mabel's face carefully for signs that she'll wake up, but she doesn't move as light whispers inside Scar's flesh, drawing alchemical symbols on the muscles of his arm. She isn't aware of what's going on, and as Scar watches her, he tries to keep himself from thinking too much about his own actions.

_No mercy_, he tells himself, mouthing the words like a prayer to Ishbala, or maybe a plea for forgiveness. _None._

The papers puff into dust.

They are the most delicate things he has ever taken pains to destroy.

Leaning over the table, Scar brushes the debris away, letting the flakes disperse into the air. They catch flight on invisible currents, spreading into small clouds before vanishing into the grey-grimed kitchen. Soon, the only evidence of the documents is a faint powder that settles into the cracks of the table, testament to the photographs and signatures and files that can never be recovered.

Mabel stirs as he straightens up. He touches her shoulder to reassure her. She makes a smacking noise with her mouth, vulnerable and young, and he waits patiently until her breathing turns deep and rhythmic again.

Once the woman has settled back into sleep, Scar backpedals from the kitchen carefully, measuring out each step. He lingers by the doorway. Mabel is slumped alone at the empty table, and Scar's fingers hover over the lightswitch before deciding to leave it on, just in case she'd wake up and be afraid of the darkness.

He closes the front door behind him when he goes.

He doesn't let himself look back.


End file.
